Trousseau - Arbois, Jura, France

If you do a Google image search for Trousseau, you might be surprised at what pops up.  It seems there is a company that makes bridal dresses who goes by the name Modern Trousseau, trousseau being another name for the outfit of a bride, apparently (the grape, it turns out, is named for this reason...the shape of the bunch apparently looks "packed up" like a wedding dress). Searching for its other well-known synonym "Bastardo" leads you down an entirely different pathway, as there is (or was, I don't really know) a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies named Antonio Bastardo.  The crossroads of the world can sometimes amaze you.

But obviously we're not here to talk about wedding dresses or obscure Phillies pitchers.  We're here today to talk about the grape Trousseau and its place in the Jura (we've briefly visited Trousseau in a Crémant de Jura post).  As mentioned above, Trousseau is known as Bastardo in Portugal where it is allowed as part of the Port blend.  It's grown in small quantities in Australia and California as well, but it's not a very important grape in either of those places.  It's not very popular with growers because it yields irregularly, but it is a good fit for the Jura because it buds late and misses many of the early spring frosts common to the region.

As for the Jura, well, the Jura is different.  Let's go ahead and get that statement out of the way because it is uncontroversially true.  At tastings of Jura wines, you should be presented with the red wines first before you work your way up to the whites as the red wines are frequently made in a much lighter style and tend to resemble rosé wines in color more so than reds.  To give you an idea, the thin skinned and pale Pinot Noir is used in the Jura to provide extra color and structure to the red wines of the region (especially those made from the Poulsard grape).  That's how light many of the reds from here can be.  The whites, on the other hand, are usually introduced to wood at some point along their way and, very often, are intentionally oxidized to some degree.  We'll talk a bit more about that when we get to Savagnin on this site.

The point is that the Jura is weird and, frankly, it's not for everybody.  The distinctive nutty tang of oxidation is, technically speaking, a fault in the wine and some people just can't get past that.  The red wines are un-apologetically light in color and body and don't carry the new-world hall marks of over-extraction and oak-blanketing.  Jura wines are old-school, plain and simple, and some people just can't get on board with that.  And that's fine.  There's just more for me, I guess.

Before I get to the wines I tried, I do want to talk for a minute about the place I got them.  The place is the Wine Bottega in the North End of Boston and if you like wine, this is the kind of place you can't afford not to go to.  The staff are incredibly knowledgeable and friendly and their selection is out of this world.  They have tastings at least once a week and at those tastings they put on a master class for each region and producer that they are profiling.  You won't find Parker and Spectator scores plastered all over the place, but you will find witty, informative blurbs on an astonishing number of bottles to let you know what you might expect when you pull the cork.  This place has become my go-to wine shop in the Boston area and I've been spending so much time there over the past few months they may need to start charging me rent. Nearly every bottle from the Jura that I'll be writing about over the next few days were picked up from the Wine Bottega.  They have more bottles from the Jura than probably anybody else in Massachusetts so if you're curious about the region, start here and put yourself in their hands.  They won't lead you astray.

The first bottle was from Michel Gahier in Arbois, Jura (the town at the very top of the region that has its own DOC and which is the go-to place for Jura reds).  I will say that wines from the Jura don't come cheap, as this bottle set me back $32.  They are unique and fascinating, though, so I don't mind spending the money.  In the glass, this wine had a pale ruby color.  It was explosively aromatic with wild, brambly red fruit, dusky raspberry, wild strawberry, tea leaves, damp herbs and musky leather.  "Perfumed" is too nice a word for what was going on here.  This was wildly and savagely aromatic and absolutely intoxicating to smell.  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with high acid and no tannins.  There was wild strawberry and light raspberry fruit with some forest floor/wet tea leaves flavors as well.  It was not as explosive on the palate as it was on the nose, but was very nice.  Cool weather Pinot Noir is a good comparison point here, so if you're a fan of that kind of thing, give this a shot.

The second bottle I tried was a 2005 Domaine Rolet Pere et Fils from Arbois which I got at Bin Ends for about $19.  The wine had a pale ruby color and a delicate nose of strawberry and raspberry fruit.  The nose here was much more restrained than in the prior bottle, possibly because of the bottle age but also possibly because I think Rolet is tends to be a little cleaner and more polished than some of the other producers of the Jura.  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with acid on the higher side of medium and very low tannins.  There was some dusky strawberry fruit with some red cherry and a little bit of baking spice and forest floor character to it.  The fruit was very pure here and much cleaner and more polished than the Gahier bottling.  If you twisted my arm about it, I'd probably say that this was a better made wine, technically speaking, but that something gets lost sometimes with pure technical virtuosity.  This wine was definitely a little cleaner and smooth around the edges, but it just wasn't as interesting as the Gahier bottling to me.  The analogue to cool weather Pinot Noir is much more pronounced here and this would be a good introduction for those of you who aren't yet ready to throw your hands up and let the Jura take you on a wild ride.  But for those who want to take a little walk on the wild side, go check out my friends at the Bottega and let them hook you up.  I can't imagine you'll be disappointed.

I also would like to point out that I have written the section on the Jura for AG Wine's iPhone app.  The piece is currently in the final editing stages and should be up on the app soon.  If you buy the app now, you will receive all future updates with new regions for free.  You can check out AG Wine's website here or you can go here to download the app for your iPhone or iPad.  It's definitely one of the most informative and useful wine apps that I've used and I enthusiastically recommend it for people interested in learning more about wine and less about wine scores.  I've also written the section on Alsace and the upcoming section for Savoie as well.  Their free Wine News app also syndicates my posts so you can follow Fringe Wine and many other great writers on the go for free.  In the interest of full disclosure, I do not receive any financial compensation from AG Wine for any of the content or promotion that I provide to them.

Crémant de Jura Rosé - Jura, France

After attending a great tasting of wines from the Jura at The Wine Bottega in the North End of Boston last week, I decided  to finally turn my attention to a tasting note for a Crémant de Jura that's been sitting in my notebook for awhile.  I keep looking at this note and putting it off in favor of another topic and just have had a difficult time working up the motivation to write about it.  It's not that it is isn't an interesting wine.  In fact, it has pretty much all three Fringe Wine components working for it: unusual grapes (Trousseau and Poulsard), unusual region and unusual style (most Crémant de Jura is made from Chardonnay in a Blanc de Blancs style).  No, my hesitation stemmed from something a little more personal: I'm a terrible sparkling wine taster.

More specifically, I guess, I'm a terrible taster of sparkling wines made using the traditional Champagne method.  The secondary flavor characteristics from lees aging coupled with the bubbles form a tag team that I have difficulty penetrating.  Charmat method wines don't give me as much trouble but it's still tough for me to taste past the bubbles.  Don't get me wrong, I love sparkling wines and enjoy them every opportunity I get, but the nuances are mostly lost on me (unlike my fellow Boston-area blogger Dale Cruse whose blog is essential reading for bubbly fans).  The only remedy, I've decided, is to keep plugging away and work my way through it (the ultimate torture, I know: drink more sparkling wine).

So, anyway, about that Crémant de Jura.  The Jura is a small region in France, east of Burgundy, on the border with Switzerland.  It's a little farther north than Savoie and is less geologically rugged as the Jura mountains are more sylvan and resemble rolling hills more than capital-M Mountains.  There are five different grape varieties used in the Jura: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Trousseau, Poulsard (sometimes called Ploussard) and Savagnin.  The red wines from here are usually very light in both color and body and Pinot Noir is actually used to darken the wines made from Poulsard and Trousseau.  The white wines are usually a little heftier, are served after the reds in a tasting, and are often intentionally oxidized to some extent (to greatest effect in the region's vin jaune offerings).  Production is not particularly voluminous here and when you couple that with the off-beat style of many of the offerings, it translates into limited exposure in the US market.  Word is spreading about these wines, though, and though they're still not omnipresent, they are showing up in more shops and are well worth the search.

The bottle I was able to find was from Domaine Rolet Pere et Fils.  It's a non-vintage bottling that I got for around $19 from my friends at Bin Ends.   The grapes featured in this rosé sparkler were Poulsard, Trousseau and Pinot Noir and Fringe Wine regulars may note that I didn't write about the grapes in the body of the post.  I skipped it this time not out of negligence but because I have single varietal bottlings of Poulsard and Trousseau that I picked up at the Jura tasting that will be written up soon.  Suffice to say for now that Poulsard is a very thin-skinned red grape that gives very little color, and Trousseau is also known as Bastardo in Portugal where it is a permitted grape in the Port blend but is not considered one of the five noble port grapes.  In the glass this had a pale salmon color and a nice, steady bead.  The nose was fruity with some strawberry and toast but not much else.  The wine was dry with high acidity, a creamy mousse, some nice strawberry fruit, and some toasty notes.  This was a relatively straightforward rosé sparkler that hit just a few notes, but hit them pretty well.  I had this with an Alfredo sauced pasta dish and found that it served very admirably as an accompaniment.  This particular bottling from the Jura probably won't change your life or anything, but it is a nice, accessible introduction to a very unique and interesting region in France.

I also would like to point out that I have written the section on the Jura for AG Wine's iPhone app.  The piece is currently in the final editing stages and should be up on the app soon.  If you buy the app now, you will receive all future updates with new regions for free.  You can check out AG Wine's website here or you can go here to download the app for your iPhone or iPad.  It's definitely one of the most informative and useful wine apps that I've used and I enthusiastically recommend it for people interested in learning more about wine and less about wine scores.  I've also written the section on Alsace and the upcoming section for Savoie as well.  Their free Wine News app also syndicates my posts so you can follow Fringe Wine and many other great writers on the go for free.  In the interest of full disclosure, I do not receive any financial compensation from AG Wine for any of the content or promotion that I provide to them.